The Day of the African Child: Remembering Soweto, Confronting Today’s Struggles.
By Youngerson Matete.
On June 16 every year, Africa commemorates the Day of the African Child. A solemn occasion born from the blood-soaked streets of Soweto in 1976. On that day, thousands of Black students in apartheid South Africa took to the streets to protest against the imposition of Afrikaans as the medium of instruction in schools. A policy that symbolized the broader, systemic oppression of Black lives under apartheid. The apartheid regime responded with brutal force, killing hundreds of young students, some as young as 12 years old. Among them was 13-year-old Hector Pieterson, whose lifeless body, captured in a harrowing photograph, became a global symbol of youth resistance.
The Soweto Uprising was more than a protest against language policy; it was a radical defiance of a racist system by the youngest members of society. Today’s youth in Africa, however, face a different yet equally insidious enemy. The status quo of post-colonial stagnation, economic exclusion, and authoritarianism. As we honor the courage of the youth of 1976, we must confront the silence and disengagement of today’s youth, understand the roots of their disempowerment, and explore how the legacy of Soweto can reignite their agency.
What Has Changed: From Colonization to Post-Colonial Disillusionment.
Africa’s political terrain has drastically transformed since 1976. The chains of colonialism and apartheid have largely been broken, and nearly all African countries now boast independent governments with constitutions that promise human rights, education, and youth participation. Yet, as Ugandan scholar Mahmood Mamdani (1996) warns, “the post-colonial state inherited the structures of domination rather than dismantling them.”
Youth in Africa today inhabit nations free from colonial rule but imprisoned by economic despair, political repression, and generational betrayal. Despite making up over 60% of the continent’s population, African youth are among the most marginalized in decision-making. Unemployment rates among youth are staggeringly high. In Zimbabwe, Nigeria, and South Africa, over 40% of youth are unemployed. The inequality gap continues to widen, the young continue to wallow in poverty and despair. Educational systems remain under-resourced and misaligned with the demands of the digital age. Political spaces are often violent, captured, or manipulated, leaving youth disillusioned and alienated.
What Went Wrong: From Liberation to Elitism.
Several things have gone wrong since the fall of colonial and apartheid regimes. In fact little at all has gone right after independence. Everything has gone from bad to worse. In many instances African youths are now romanticizing the idea that colonialism was better. First, liberation movements mutated into ruling parties that prioritize loyalty over merit, and stability over justice. In many cases, they have transformed into corrupt political dynasties that recycle power among the elite. A betrayal of the ideals that fueled struggles like Soweto.
Moreover, African states have failed to transition into inclusive democracies. Instead, they often mirror the colonial state in structure and function. As Achille Mbembe aptly put it On the Postcolony, power in many African states remains performative, centralized, and coercive. Institutions are weak, and citizenship is conditional upon silence, conformity, or connections.
Furthermore, the commodification of politics and emergence of patron-client networks have depoliticized the youth. Young people are often reduced to foot soldiers during elections, manipulated with freebies, slogans, or tribal narratives. Youth voices are instrumentalized not institutionalized. As a result, activism has become episodic, not systemic.
In addition, the digital age, while opening avenues for mobilization, has also brought surveillance, misinformation, and performative activism. The culture of “clout” has outpaced the culture of commitment. While some youth do engage in protests or campaigns, they often lack the organizational depth and ideological clarity that characterized movements like the Soweto Uprising.
A Contrast in Courage: Soweto vs. Present-Day Passivity.
The youth of 1976 were not only brave but deeply political. They studied revolutionary literature, formed underground networks, and articulated their demands with clarity. Their courage was not born from privilege but from necessity. They knew that silence was complicity, and that the cost of fear was a future chained to oppression.
Today, that fire has dimmed. Many young people, while frustrated, remain spectators in their own societies. Political apathy, learned helplessness, and the internalization of inferiority have paralyzed youth agency. As Nigerian scholar Amina Mama has noted, "oppression persists not merely because it is imposed, but because it is internalized.”
But is this the fault of young people alone? No. The education system has failed to nurture critical thinking. The state has criminalized dissent. And elders have monopolized leadership and narratives of struggle, often dismissing youth as "too young" or "too Westernized" to lead transformation.
What Today’s Youth Can Learn from 1976.
Today’s youth can draw powerful lessons from the generation of 1976, whose courage, political clarity, and willingness to confront systemic injustice remain a blueprint for meaningful resistance. The Soweto youth did not wait for ideal conditions—they organized in hostile environments, educated themselves on the political realities of their time, and mobilized collectively with a clear vision of freedom and justice. In contrast, many of today’s youth face challenges of political apathy, digital distraction, and systemic repression, but the spirit of 1976 teaches that change requires both courage and collective action. From the 1976 generation, young people have many lessons that I will elaborate but the major lessons is to learn the value of ideological clarity over performative activism, the importance of organizing beyond social media, and the power of intergenerational solidarity. Above all, they are reminded that liberation is not a gift from the powerful but a result of sustained struggle by the determined.
Courage Must Replace Comfort.
The Soweto generation did not wait for perfect conditions to demand justice. They rose up in the face of structural violence, institutionalized racism, and the threat of death. With little access to the global platforms that today’s youth enjoy, they relied on solidarity, underground organizing, and sheer courage to confront one of the most brutal regimes in modern history. Their resistance was not reactive. It was intentional, strategic, and deeply rooted in a collective consciousness that recognized silence as complicity. They understood that justice was never handed down freely. It had to be demanded, even when the cost was life itself.
In contrast, many of today’s youth are caught in a cycle of digital activism that, while important, often fails to translate into sustained, offline action. Social media has created the illusion of engagement, allowing young people to express outrage without taking risks or making sacrifices. But reclaiming public spaces such as schools, streets, legislatures, and communities is essential for real transformation. True change is not comfortable, it is often met with resistance, violence, or intimidation. Yet, as the Soweto youth demonstrated, progress demands discomfort. The current generation must rediscover the urgency of physical mobilization, confront oppressive systems directly, and move beyond hashtags to build lasting, impactful movements.
Organize Beyond Hashtags.
While social media is undeniably a powerful tool for communication, mobilization, and awareness-raising, it cannot replace the deep, structured work of grassroots organizing. Online platforms allow young people to connect across borders, amplify their voices, and spotlight injustices in real time. However, digital activism often remains transient and reactive, driven by trends and hashtags that fade as quickly as they rise. True transformation requires more than viral campaigns. It demands staying power, strategy, and coordination. The youth who led the Soweto Uprising operated within a framework of underground networks, student organizations, and community alliances. They did not only protest, they organized, educated each other, and built systems of resistance that could outlast a single demonstration or march.
Today’s youth must emulate that same commitment by investing in institutions and movements that are rooted in their communities and accountable to the people they serve. This means forming youth-led organizations, participating in civic education programs, creating alternative political spaces, and developing leadership pipelines that cultivate ideologically grounded change makers. Political literacy understanding systems, laws, history, and power is essential to challenge the status quo meaningfully. Without it, even the loudest voices online risk becoming echoes in an algorithm rather than agents of change on the ground. The power of the Soweto generation came not only from their defiance but from their discipline and vision. That is the blueprint today’s youth must revive.
Know Your History.
Many young Africans today are increasingly detached from the continent’s long and rich history of resistance. A history marked by the bold defiance of colonial subjugation, apartheid, and post-independence authoritarianism. This detachment is not merely a result of disinterest but is often a product of formal education systems that prioritize rote learning over critical consciousness. Curricula in many African countries still reflect colonial legacies, omitting or sanitizing the radical struggles that gave birth to liberation movements and democratic ideals. As a result, today’s youth grow up without a full appreciation of the sacrifices made by previous generations and are ill-equipped to see themselves as agents of political change. Their disconnection from historical narratives breeds apathy, while the absence of political education undermines their capacity to challenge injustice.
To reverse this, civic education must be reimagined. It must move beyond textbooks and become an immersive, critical, and participatory process. This means centering oral histories, the firsthand accounts of elders, activists, and survivors of state violence so that the lessons of struggle are passed down through lived experience. It means introducing young people to radical thought, including the works of thinkers like Frantz Fanon, Amílcar Cabral, Steve Biko, and Thomas Sankara, whose ideas about liberation, self-determination, and decolonization remain relevant today. And it requires structured intergenerational dialogue, where the wisdom of the past meets the urgency of the present, fostering mentorship and political consciousness. As Fanon wrote in The Wretched of the Earth, “each generation must discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it.” That mission cannot be fulfilled in ignorance, it must be nurtured through deliberate, decolonized education that roots African youth in the struggle, resilience, and vision of their ancestors.
Build Ideological Clarity.
The Soweto youth were not acting in isolation; they were part of a broader and deeply organized anti-apartheid movement that had clear ideological foundations and long-term goals. Their resistance was grounded in a comprehensive understanding of the structural nature of oppression. They recognized that the Afrikaans language policy was merely a symptom of a wider system of racial domination, economic exclusion, and political disenfranchisement. This ideological clarity gave their actions coherence and direction, allowing them to confront not just immediate grievances, but the very architecture of apartheid itself. Their struggle was informed by political education, solidarity with liberation movements across Africa, and a strategic alignment with national and international forces pushing for systemic change.
In contrast, much of today’s youth activism, while passionate and urgent, often remains issue-based and fragmented. Campaigns are frequently mobilized in response to single events such as corruption , a rigged election, or a spike in tuition fees rather than as part of a sustained challenge to the systems that produce such crises. Whether the concern is climate change, police brutality, gender-based violence, or unemployment, these are not isolated problems; they are interconnected outcomes of broader structural injustices rooted in capitalism, patriarchy, authoritarianism, and neo-colonialism. To be truly transformative, youth activism must evolve from momentary outrage to systemic critique. This means building movements with ideological depth, engaging in political education, and situating contemporary struggles within the long arc of historical injustice just as the Soweto generation did.
Solidarity Across Borders.
Apartheid was not defeated by South Africans alone. While the internal resistance, spearheaded by brave youth, workers, and activists, laid the groundwork for sustained rebellion, it was the global anti-apartheid movement that amplified the struggle and placed the apartheid regime under immense pressure. International solidarity came in many forms, from sanctions and divestment campaigns to protests in Western capitals and support from liberation movements across Africa. Countries like Tanzania, Zambia, and Nigeria provided training camps and diplomatic support to the African National Congress (ANC) and other liberation groups. Artists, students, labor unions, and ordinary citizens across the world joined hands to isolate the apartheid regime. This collective pressure helped make the cost of sustaining apartheid too high, contributing to its eventual dismantling.
Today’s youth must draw inspiration from this history of cross-border solidarity to confront contemporary challenges that are too complex and widespread for isolated national efforts. Issues like xenophobia, authoritarianism, and corruption transcend borders and demand a pan-African response. Youth must begin to build coalitions, share strategies, and support one another in holding leaders accountable and advancing democratic reforms. Whether through digital activism, continental youth networks, or collaborative advocacy campaigns, the youth of today must see themselves not just as citizens of their individual nations but as custodians of a collective African future. Only through unity, shared struggle, and mutual learning can the continent overcome the systemic challenges it faces.
Correcting the Path: Reviving Youth Agency.
In hostile regimes that suppress dissent, reclaiming youth agency is urgent yet difficult. Decolonizing minds and fostering critical civic engagement equips youth to challenge authoritarianism.Real political inclusion and youth-led economic empowerment offer paths beyond state control.Protecting democratic freedoms demands resilient, creative resistance against repression.
Reimagine Education.
Alternative forms of education are essential for African youth to reclaim their agency and resist the oppressive structures maintained by state-controlled systems that perpetuate colonial ideologies and authoritarian domination. The conventional education systems in many African countries continue to mirror colonial frameworks, reinforcing Eurocentric content, hierarchical learning, and political docility. These systems often marginalize indigenous knowledge, erase African resistance histories, and produce obedient subjects rather than critical thinkers. In contrast, community-based, emancipatory, and culturally grounded models of education such as popular education, pan-African study circles, indigenous mentorship, and arts-based pedagogy can empower youth with tools for consciousness and resistance. As Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (1986) contends in Decolonising the Mind, true liberation starts with reclaiming African languages, epistemologies, and cultural memory. Alternative education must prioritize learning that is rooted in African realities, values, and aspirations, disrupting the colonial mindset and fostering solidarity, identity, and critical political awareness among learners.
To build truly democratic societies, civic and political education must be decoupled from state manipulation and embedded into everyday learning through grassroots initiatives and participatory methods. Young people must learn not only in classrooms, but in communities through youth hubs, street parliaments, creative arts, and intergenerational dialogues that center lived experience and resistance histories. These spaces should encourage questioning, storytelling, organizing, and activism as core educational practices. Teaching African history, indigenous governance systems, and contemporary political struggles must be approached in ways that empower students to see themselves as active agents of change. Educators, whether formally trained or community-based, must facilitate learning environments that embrace dissent and encourage collaborative knowledge production. In this way, education becomes a tool of liberation rather than control—building a generation of youth with the consciousness, courage, and competence to dismantle oppression and imagine new futures.
Create Political Pipelines.
Youth must not only be voters or protestors. They must be lawmakers, decision-makers, and agenda-setters. The time has come for young people to move from the periphery of political engagement to the very center of power. Voting and protesting are important forms of civic participation, but they must be complemented by structured pathways into legislative and executive roles. When youth are confined to the streets or social media, their influence remains reactive rather than transformative. To build a just and equitable Africa, young people must occupy spaces where policies are made, budgets are drafted, and national priorities are set. This shift requires more than ambition. It demands political will, institutional reform, and access to the necessary tools and platforms for young leaders to thrive.
We must abandon the culture of tokenism, where youth are included merely for optics or demographic balance. Instead, they must deliberate efforts to invest in cultivating a new generation of transformative leaders. This means designing mentorship programs, leadership academies, and youth political caucuses that equip young people with the knowledge, skills, and networks required to navigate complex political systems. It also involves challenging political structures to allow for youth leadership at all levels from local wards to national executive committees. Civil society must also move from treating youth as passive "beneficiaries" of projects to recognizing them as co-creators and co-leaders of change. Only through genuine empowerment can the youth become not just the future, but the present of African leadership.
Reclaiming Power: Building Alternative Pathways for Youth Participation Under Authoritarian Regimes.
In authoritarian regimes where youth participation is systematically stifled, alternative and resilient means of institutionalizing youth involvement in governance are essential for reclaiming democratic space. Traditional mechanisms like youth quotas, while helpful in theory, are often manipulated under autocratic systems to co-opt, pacify, or tokenize youth voices without granting real power. In such environments, young people must explore and build parallel participatory structures outside formal state institutions. These can include youth-led policy forums, shadow parliaments, civic assemblies, and thematic coalitions that operate autonomously yet engage with policy issues in informed and organized ways. Through digital advocacy, community organizing, and issue-based lobbying, youth can exert pressure on local and national authorities from the ground up. Platforms like youth councils anchored in civil society organizations, university policy clinics, and neighborhood development committees can serve as functional alternatives to official state structures—creating opportunities for decision-making, accountability, and influence, even without state endorsement.
Beyond symbolic representation, what youth need is substantive participation that translates into power, resources, and influence. In the absence of genuine state support, youth movements must institutionalize leadership pipelines internally prioritizing mentorship, political education, intergenerational learning, and skills development. Investing in collective leadership models, such as rotating spokespersons or issue-based representatives, can decentralize authority and prevent co-optation. Collaborative campaigns across sectors such as alliances between students, artists, informal workers, and grassroots activists can amplify youth voices in budgetary, policy, and legislative processes through public submissions, protests, community audits, and parallel reports. These forms of engagement challenge the legitimacy of authoritarian governance while demonstrating alternative democratic practices in action. In such hostile political environments, institutionalizing youth participation is less about waiting for space to be granted and more about building autonomous spaces where youth actively practice power, shape narratives, and assert their rightful role in governance.
Invest in Youth Economies.
In authoritarian regimes where economic opportunities are weaponized to control and pacify the youth, empowering young people requires bold, alternative strategies that reduce their dependency on state patronage and foster autonomous livelihoods. Deliberate efforts must go beyond rhetorical support and invest directly in youth-led initiatives that exist outside state capture. This includes establishing independent solidarity economy networks, and youth-run cooperatives that are insulated from political interference. Underground innovation hubs, mobile business incubators, and mutual aid associations can offer safe spaces for economic experimentation and learning, particularly in rural or politically marginalized areas. Such interventions must deliberately prioritize disenfranchised youth—including women, LGBTQ+ youth, and those in informal settlements, who are often excluded from elite economic circles. Crucially, these economic spaces should be linked to political education and community organizing, fostering an ecosystem where income generation and civic consciousness grow together. Empowering youth economically in this way builds resilience against state manipulation and creates a base of independent actors capable of driving structural change from below. Ask yourself, when was the last time you bought simple vegetables from a fellow young person who is thriving to survive by selling vegetables and fruits while fighting injustices? We are all guilty of disempowering each other economically. These are simple actions of economic solidarity that sustains the struggle.
Economic agency under repressive regimes is not just about survival, it is a form of resistance. Authoritarian governments often use access to jobs, contracts, and capital as tools of coercion, rewarding loyalty and punishing dissent. Breaking this cycle requires shifting economic power into the hands of young people who are not beholden to political elites. This means supporting informal economies, cooperative labor models, and alternative currencies or barter systems where necessary. International development actors must fund grassroots economic justice movements and youth savings groups, while protecting them from state backlash through legal aid, security training, and digital protection. As youth gain economic independence, their political engagement deepens. They become more confident in confronting corruption, organizing collective action, and envisioning alternative futures. Economic empowerment in this context is not merely an employment strategy; it is foundational to democratic resilience and a direct challenge to authoritarian systems that thrive on poverty, dependency, and fear. Imagine if we had supported artist like Hosea Chipanga, who has been consistent in singing against injustice?
Protect Democratic Spaces.
In competitive authoritarian regimes, protecting democratic spaces is a critical act of resistance and survival. These regimes systematically shrink civic space through surveillance, arbitrary arrests, media censorship, and repressive laws targeting protests, NGOs, and online expression. For youth, who are often at the forefront of demands for accountability and reform, these hostile conditions create a climate of fear and forced silence. Yet, even under such oppression, democratic space can be defended and reimagined through decentralized organizing, encrypted digital platforms, underground publications, and creative cultural resistance. Art, satire, music, and social media storytelling have become powerful tools for reclaiming narrative control and keeping civic consciousness alive when public protest is criminalized. Protecting democratic spaces in these environments means not just resisting closure, but actively creating alternative venues—virtual and physical—where dissent can flourish, solidarity can be built, and hope can be sustained.
Furthermore, the international community and regional bodies have a responsibility to actively support the defense of civic space in authoritarian contexts. This includes providing protection mechanisms for youth activists, funding independent media and civil society, and speaking out against crackdowns on democratic freedoms. But more importantly, democratic space must be grounded in the grassroots—anchored in community organizing, mutual aid networks, student movements, and faith-based initiatives that are harder to dismantle than formal institutions. Authoritarian regimes thrive on isolation and fragmentation; protecting civic space requires fostering interconnected youth movements that learn from each other, share tactics, and amplify each other’s struggles across borders. By embedding resistance within everyday life and social structures, young people can keep the flame of democracy alive, even in the darkest political climates.
The Struggle Continues.
As we commemorate the Day of the African Child, we must resist the temptation to romanticize the past without interrogating the present. The memory of Soweto must not be reduced to wreath-laying and speeches. It must be resurrected as a call to action.
The children of 1976 did not die so that today’s youth could be silent in the face of injustice. They did not march for future generations to inherit liberated states that mimic the architecture of their colonizers. They marched so that Africa’s future would be shaped by Africans — especially its youth.
Today’s youth must rediscover that spirit. They must reject passivity, challenge authoritarianism, and demand justice — not in slogans, but in sustained struggle. The Soweto youth left behind a blueprint: organize, resist, imagine. As the Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci once wrote, "The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear." In these monstrous times, it is the courageous resistance of young people that will usher in the birth of a new, just, and democratic Africa.
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Email:youngmatete0@gmail.com/ director@projectvote263.org.zw
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